indira babbellapati - life-force*

once again the earth
stealthily gnawed at her own margins
entombing gods and humans alike.
freezing all human activity
in its innocent sleep

the buried gods
from the earth below
bear witness to
frozen petrified children
still at their study…
panting parents
under the dead weight
of their young ones…
a just fed infant alive
with a mouthful of milk
in the arms of a mother dead…
a life entrapped for thirteen days
with its breath still intact…

the debris of several limbs
under the rubble of once
a make believe world
and
piles of decaying bodies
impatiently await
a mass burial
as bulldozers devise
bizarre beds
for the dead amid the rubble…

overwhelmed and stunned
the sorrow of the world
erased its boundaries
to find one another
once again.

*(A RE-POST IN SYMPATHY WITH THE QUAKE VICTIMS OF IINDONESIA. this is written after an earthquake in iran a couple of years ago. it's published by postcolonial discourse, an online literary journal from canada)

indira babbellapati

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/life-force-3/